Humiliation: lesbian pop culture style

In David Lodge‘s campus comedy, Changing Places, the characters play a game called Humiliation, in which they take turns admitting their secret literary shame. Each player names the most embarrassing book they’ve never read, and when one character wins by admitting that he’s never read Hamlet, he loses his job. The AfterEllen.com bloggers recently played our own game of Lesbian Pop Culture Humiliation, and when Sarah Warn, Malinda Lo and Trish Bendix read our confessions, we’re probably all going to get fired.

To make our impending unemployment worth it, you’ve got to play along!

My secret lesbian shame is that I’ve never read or watched any Sarah Waters — not even the naughty bits, which I hear you can swiftly find online. (Gina Vivinetto admits this same lesbian sin.)

Reese DoWitt says the top three most embarrassing lesbian movies she’s never seen are Bound, The Incredible Adventures Of Two Girls In Love and Chutney Popcorn.

Dorothy Snarker admits to never having watched a single episode of Bad Girls. (She played it down, though, by saying that she has watched plenty of Helen and Nikki fan videos.)

The Linster has never seen Work Out, doesn’t own any Tegan and Sara, and hates country music. (Which, she says, is a uniquely Southern shame.)

Ms. Anthrope admits to never having seen Desert Hearts.

While Roc confesses that she doesn’t own any Melissa Etheridge or Indigo Girls albums, Browne says she’s never even heard an Indigo Girls song.

Once Browne got going, it was like she was clearing a lifetime’s worth of pop culture shame off her chest. She was throwing out words like Xena, The L Word, Cagney and Lacey, Jeanette Winterson, Fried Green Tomatoes, Bad Girls, Personal Best, The Hunger, Bound, Go Fish, Mulholland Drive…

We finally had to take away her keyboard before the Queer Police came to revoke her card.

A lot of barbs went back and forth about Buffy, with some of us saying we’ve never watched, and others saying they’d punch us in the eye if we didn’t Netflix it immediately.